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Commentary

Gold Cup: Anything less than another U.S. championship will be a failure

At various times since he was named the
U.S. men's national team coach, Gregg Berhalter has emphasized the need to make progress.

“Each and every game, you should expect to see development among the team," he
said after being appointed to the job last December. "That's my job.”

With each game, the USA should add another layer of experiences the core group of players can take into the
next game and develop the chemistry and rebuild the confidence of a team shattered by its stunning loss to Trinidad & Tobago in October and its failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

“As with any team building, it’s a process,” Berhalter said at his introductory news conference. “I don’t want to use that as an excuse and say eight years from now we
are going to be good. The process has to accelerate."

Weston McKennie, one of the USA's top young players, takes it one step further.

“We want to progress," said
McKennie at the U.S. ahead of Tuesday's Gold Cup opener against Guyana in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Of course, that also means winning the games, but we want to develop our style. Our goal is to make
people see U.S. soccer as something different as what they see now, probably.”

Eight months after Berhalter was hired, the rebuilding of the national team is still a work in
progress and people are waiting to see a new and different style. By those measures, the USA might not have to win the 2019 Gold Cup, but it has to do what it has failed to do so far in the four
friendlies that mattered since Berhalter took charge.

In Berhalter's own terms, which he emphasized time and again, the USA needs to (1) dominate its opponents, (2) consistently break
down their backline and (3) create good scoring opportunities in the opposing penalty area. That should not be asking for a lot, but so far it's been a struggle to achieve these three goals.

The closest the USA came to
achieving all three, ironically, was in the second half of the Venezuela game it lost, 3-0, after conceding three horrible goals in the first half.

"I think to a certain extent we did that
really well," Berhalter said after the debacle in Cincinnati.

Otherwise, the USA has created few chances, matching the same number of shots on goal against against La Vinotinto it created in
the three previous matches combined:

One is tempted to give Berhalter the benefit of the doubt. In March, he said his
European-based players had only a couple of practices before the first game against Ecuador. In the two friendlies that followed the Annapolis camp, Berhalter was working on building up the fitness of
players who had been selected after suffering hamstring injuries.

And at the Gold Cup, the USA will be without its best defender, John Brooks, and the player around whom Berhalter
built his primary attacking and defending scheme, Tyler Adams.

The USA has not done well at the last two post-World Cup Gold Cups.

In 2011, it lost for the first and
still only time in the group stage when it fell to Panama, 2-1. Days after the USA lost to Mexico, 4-2, in the final, Coach Bob Bradley was fired.

In 2015, the USA finished fourth
-- its worst finish since 2000 -- and struggled throughout most of the tournament to dominate weaker Concacaf opponents. Jurgen Klinsmann kept his job for more than a year after the Gold Cup,
but the writing was on the wall.Both Bradley and Klinsmann were in the first year and second year of their second cycles with the national team when they got fired.
Berhalter is in the first year of his first cycle, so he will get a longer leash, barring a complete disaster.

The USA won the Gold Cup in 2007, Bradley's first year in charge, beating
Mexico, 2-1, before 60,000 fans at Chicago's Soldier Field. And it won Klinsmann's first Gold Cup, in 2013, beating Panama, 1-0, in the final at Soldier Field to complete a run of six wins in six
games by a margin of 20-3.

By that standard, anything less than the USA
winning the Gold Cup back at Soldier Field on July 7 has to be considered a failure for Berhalter.

The second half of the Venzuela game? Really? How can you talk about something that was over at halftime. If they can't take the game to there opponents in this tournament I, could care less about his future of the coach. It will tell me that, this group is in serious danger of not qualifying again and try that on for size.

If we do poorly, US Soccer ownes this one...waiting SO long to appoint a head coach. I'll give GB a pass... Such a shame for him not to have the time to get fully acclimated to the international environment as a coach, and get the needed time with the various players in more camps and freindlies. Not a knock on Dave S, he was placed in no-win situation and carried on like an old trooper...but so much wasted time...

There are those of us who feel that Hugo Perez and Tab Ramos should have at least been interviewed for the position. However, after watching Tab with his U20 team and considering the players he’s been fielding for the past couple years, USSoccer may consider him the “goose that lays the golden egg”....like why mess with a good thing? Berhalter spoke of the things the team needed to work on for their game tonight. After watching the previous friendlies, to me it looked as if we need to work on EVERYTHING. Hopefully, it’s been fixed since Berhalter seemed content with how we were doing. We’ll soon see.

If that’s the case, Ginger, is like to see Brian Kleiban take over the younger groups and have Tab move up. Kleiban may not have the gravitas and pro experience that Tab does but he’s gotten results at the highest club level with kids and his teams are a joy to watch.